MLA style: "The Madness of July.." The Free Library. 2014 Midwest Book Review 26 Nov. 2023 https://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Madness+of+July.-a0386436667 I thought that I might be comparing it too much to Le Carré so left it for a while and started again but it was like homework.

Sam would be punctual, reaching their rendezvous at the appointed minute and moving on if Flemyng didn’t appear. He had in mind the last scribbled words on the postcard he had destroyed in the early hours of the morning: ‘Don’t dawdle.’ They were playing their old game. Masterfully weaving together espionage, political intrigue, and family drama, James Naughtie has written a spy novel for the ages, worthy of comparison to the finest work of Charles McCarry and Robert Littell. Plot is secondary to he emotional life of the characters. Naughtie’s chosen epigraph is a quotation from The Great Gatsby – “I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the griefs of wild, unknown men” – and it is these buried griefs that he seeks to unearth, showing that the political class is ruled far more by private passion than cool logic. The “madness” is that which haunts every public figure, their smooth professional façade concealing unknown inner turmoil. Government, in Naughtie’s depiction, is a mess of muddled loyalties and dark arts, all invisible to the plebeian eye. APA style: The Madness of July.. (n.d.) >The Free Library. (2014). Retrieved Nov 26 2023 from https://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Madness+of+July.-a0386436667It makes sense it was.written by a.journalist - it was.forensic, detailed and obviously polished but sadly dull and forgettable. None of the characters seemed real or believable, no one did any work and the women were cliches. It cannot be said too often that the thriller is not a loose, capacious form into which anything can be thrown as long as you remember to have a dead body and a conspiracy. Its conventions exist for solid reasons that are no less noble for being commercial. ( Lee Child doesn't write the way he does because he is technically incapable of producing "literary" prose.) If you don't intend to respect them, fine – just don't call what you've written a thriller. Chicago style: The Free Library. S.v. The Madness of July.." Retrieved Nov 26 2023 from https://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Madness+of+July.-a0386436667

It's also a clever idea to provide Will with American brothers. (The way the familial nationality difference is explained is seamless while providing another layer of contortion.) As readers we then have feet in both camps as Will becomes more and more conflicted between what he wants to do and what, increasingly, the prevailing tide is forcing him towards. Will!’ Jay Forbes could always summon up cheeriness from the depths. He steadied himself on the pavement with one hand against the car, and boomed, ‘Whither?’ As an avid Radio 4 man in the morning, I admire James Naughtie's pithy celtic observations on politics on the Today Programme. So I was very keen to listen to this novel set in '70s British politics. There is so much potential in the era and in his deep understanding of what he calls "The Game". Summer crowds swarmed and chattered around him, yet for Flemyng the winding down of the dog days brought claustrophobia, and the contrary suspicion that he was adrift on a wide sea with a spreading horizon, maybe lost. Despite the status he had achieved and the famous confidence that was his shadow, he felt creeping over him the fear that Sam had stirred up.The novel takes place over a long weekend in a month when there isn't usually much going on in Parliament as it slowly winds down towards the summer recess. However, we fall right into the action on meeting Will as we're drawn into his life and increasing fears.